Ever since my post about The Round Tower people have reminded me of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale The Tinderbox because the biggest magical dog in the story is said to have eyes as big as The Round Tower.
It’s been many years since it was read to me as a child so when I read it again I was surprised by how violent it is. It’s clearly a product of its time with the soldier basically kidnapping the princess every night, and I did remember the soldier chopping the head of the witch off for no other reason than she didn’t want to answer his question, but I had completely forgot that a crowd of people including the king and queen are mauled and torn to shreds by magical dogs.
It’s understandable that a lot of modern retellings depict the soldier as having violent PTSD from the war, but I do think the story is open to other interpretations and with a few rewrites it could be a story of finding yourself and true friendship/love.
In the original story the soldier becomes rich after crawling into the hollow tree and getting gold from the magical dogs and suddenly everyone loves him and wants to be his friends. He remembered how horrible it was to be poor so he gives his money away to every poor person he meets but no one, not even his new rich friends, ever gives him anything back so eventually he has no money left and his friends abandon him. Then he realize that the magical dogs can be summoned with an enchanted tinderbox and retrieve anything he wants so he ask for more money and suddenly people want to be his friends again, but this time it feels hollow.
Throughout the story we’re told about the princess who has been locked away by her parents because it has been foretold that she’d marry a common soldier aka a poor, and the king and queen couldn’t stand the idea and keeps her trapped so no one can fall in love with her.
The solder asks his dogs to go get the princess so he can see her and though she’s said to be asleep she tells her parents about it in the morning, calling it a dream, so she could just as easily be written as awake and being free for the first time. She might even tell her parents that they can’t keep her trapped anymore because there’s a soldier who has the power to get her out. Make up your own reasons for why she has to go back to the castle every morning, but the king and queen tries to find the soldier before she can escape for good, but the last night the soldier gives the princess the tinderbox so she can free herself. Unfortunately he is captured right after and sent to hang. Instead of a random boy getting the tinderbox for the soldier before his hanging it’s the princess who summons the dogs to save him.
Decide the king and queen’s fate yourself. Maybe the soldier and princess become the new king and queen (the princess is said to like being queen very much in the original story after all) or maybe they hit the road to live a free life with their three magical dogs.
It’s easy to go extremely dark with the story but you could just as easy give it a more positive spin in my opinion.
